I don’t know if you’ve chanced to see or read the transcript of Bristol Palin’s interview piece with FoxNews’s Greta Van Susteren, but no matter how you slice it, I can’t help but feel awful. Her body language, her unwillingness to make eye contact, and her few go-to phrases, like “wait ten years!” and “it’s not glamourous!” make me terribly sad for her.

Sad: Her rather apologetic admission that “abstinence isn’t realistic,”* couched in between assertions that nonetheless, kids should just wait to have sex, and exactly zero mention of condoms.

Sadder still: Levi Johnston qualifies as a “really hands-on dad” because he sees his own child every day. Keep raisin’ that bar, Levi!

Saddest of all: Even as Bristol notes, repeatedly, that being the young parent of a new baby is massively stressful and life-changing and not at all what she wanted for herself, she also (rather robotically, IMHO) states that “[she] wouldn’t change a thing,” that it is totally great to be a mom, and that the baby is the most perfectest thing evar. While I don’t doubt that being a new parent is a baffling mix of emotions, I really feel like there’s more than a hint of requisite regurgitation of right-wing talking points about women and their baybeez, which has an unfortunate way of supplanting the real needs of women, like Bristol, and their babies.

Good luck to you, Bristol. I’m pulling for you.

*Exact quote: “But I think abstinence is, like — like, the — I don’t know how to put it — like, the main — everyone should be abstinent or whatever, but it’s not realistic at all.

I feel bad for her because I don’t think that she was equipped to make safe decisions. Because of abstinence-only education, she wasn’t taught how to prevent pregnancy should she choose to have sex. Ok, I am going to copy and paste part of my own blog post on this so that I don’t have to type it all again:

“She didn’t want to “get into detail” about why she didn’t use any form of birth control when she decided to have sex. My guess is because she didn’t know what her options were. When you’re taught that condoms are ineffective and don’t know that you have access to the pill or just have no idea how to prevent pregnancy, there is no way for you to take any precautions. I’m sure her not wanting to get into detail was because by admitting that, she is basically discrediting her mother’s entire political agenda.”

I really do feel bad for her, but I think it took balls to stand up and admit that it isn’t realistic and to say that teens are going to have sex, even if she didn’t want to stray too far from her mom’s platform and advocated abstinence, if possible.

I just feel so frustrated that there’s no way for women like us to get at the Bristol Palins of the world, because in that one slip-up, you can see how she could get out of feeling like her self-worth is defined by what other people (including her mother) think of her. Oh well.

Hmm, I don’t fault Bristol for repeatedly assuring the TV audience (and herself?) that she really loves her baby and wouldn’t change a thing. This was a televised interview, after all, and I’m sure she doesn’t want her child to grow up knowing that “Mommy went on national TV when I was a baby and said she regretted ever having me!”

Kivrin, I don’t fault her either. And I don’t doubt her affection for Trippppppp. The point is, as the unplanned poster child (Hi-yoooo!) for the rightwing abstinence–or, you know, not–crazies, she doesn’t have much of a choice, about family planning or anything else.

Bristol, if you* ever get stressed and need someone to babysit, I would be more than willing to keep Tripp entertained for a few hours. I promise not to give him bisexual Jew cooties or anything. Here’s hoping you equip your child (or children) with better sex ed and/or protection than your mother seemed to do for you. Choose your choice Bristol, and I don’t mean than pejoratively.

Aw, I feel bad for her. She probably never wanted to be the poster child[mom] for teen pregnancy and the failure of abstinence-only education. I imagine she has people pulling at her from all angles to spout really contradictory views about her mother’s politics, so I’m kind of surprised that she admitted that abstinence is unrealistic. It sucks that she (probably) wasn’t informed enough about birth control to really make motherhood a choice, but she seems to be coming to terms with a lot of her own opinions now, so I think she’ll be ok.

That said, PLEASE let this be the last Alaska Palin we hear from for a long time.

I feel bad for her too, fishing. I can’t imagine not wanting a certain life (or at least not yet) and then suddenly, because you can’t imagine making a choice, you just kind of suddenly have to accept something, something that’s nothing if not permanent. Now, thanks to the ideology her family’s signed her up for, she’s got a future husband she might not be too jazzed about in a few years and a baby she’s in no way prepared for. At least her family is supportive, but you get the impression their version of supportive might be incredibly suffocating.

To be fair, I had my son at 28, and every once in a while I find myself wistfully wondering about my life if I’d waited five years – we could have traveled more, and paid off the car first and gone out more often. There’s really no time it’s convenient to fit a child into your life.

That said, I got a college education and even some grad school while I was still responsible for no one but me, and Bristol’s never going to have that. And parental support is great, but JerseyGrrrl’s right, it comes with strings even when your mom doesn’t have political aspirations. A girl in my parenting group had a baby right before she turned twenty, and she lives at home and goes to school, which is great, but her step-dad wouldn’t let her do any sleep training because it bothered him when the baby cried, and her mom refused to babysit on her twenty-first birthday because she didn’t approve of drinking . . . It’s never easy, and Bristol’s caught in the middle of that.

My heart goes out to this girl, really…that statement about abstinence seemed so difficult, because it was clear to me that she was trying to stay in a particular vein re: birth control, but wanted to speak to her own mind and experience.

I was just wondering, did anyone else feel uncomfortable with the question that led to this admission of abstinence being unrealistic? I feel like it could have been framed better, and that it was actually quite antagonistic. “Were you just lazy about [birth control]?” seems like a pretty nasty way to ask about her non-use of it, and has an undertone of the responsibility for BC is the woman’s regardless of whether she is prepared with facts about it or not.